


Detective Quackity

by jestayork



Series: Oneshots [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Manberg, Werewolves, but actually there are no werewolves, manburg, or an attempt at it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27856777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jestayork/pseuds/jestayork
Summary: Quackity has noticed Manberg's Secretary of State acting... weird. He's been disappearing at night, with a terrible excuse each time.And comes to the conclusion that Tubbo is a werewolf
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Liam | Hbomb, Alexis | Quackity & Toby Smith | Tubbo
Series: Oneshots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036803
Comments: 6
Kudos: 104





	Detective Quackity

About three weeks into Schlatt's presidency over Manberg, Quackity develops the suspicion that Tubbo is keeping a secret from the other members of the cabinet.

Quackity would like to think that he's an observant person. Despite how he's always goofing off, he is nowhere near oblivious of what's going on around him.

Sometimes, Schlatt calls out to Tubbo to get him to deal with some paperwork, and the boy doesn't show up. When he eventually does return, it's with a strange excuse that Quackity is shocked that Schlatt can believe. 

The sun is just above the horizon when Quackity reports to work, shuffling through papers to be signed. Skimming through the pages, it's mostly just Niki making appeals for her taxes to be lowered and Karl repeating his attempts for Quackity to accidentally sign his soul over to him. Sitting on the balcony, he appreciates the refreshing morning air as he tears up Karl's contracts.

Spotting movement in the corner of his eye, Quackity sits up, setting the papers aside, and looks into the forest just in time to see Tubbo emerging from the bushes. The boy looks tired, and is covered in dirt. He's missing his suit jacket.  
What the fuck has Tubbo been doing out in the woods? Was he gone all night?

Quackity doesn't say anything, just watching as Tubbo walks past the white house, disappearing behind the camarvan.

He doesn't think much of it. There's a million different reasons Tubbo could be out in the woods, ranging from berry picking to training his fighting skills against mobs.

But it doesn't happen just once.

Several times, he's gone looking for Tubbo only to find that he's vanished. He finds his eyes drifting to that dark forest, and the mystery of where Tubbo goes sticking in the back of his head. Quackity feels like there's some kind of pattern to his disappearances, but hasn't been able to figure it out.

Quackity doesn't enjoy being the one to collect Niki's taxes. Usually, it's Tubbo's job, but he's gone and disappeared again, leaving him as the one Schlatt ordered to go out. Unlike Tubbo's vanishing acts, there's no actual pattern to the tax collection, the task becoming more frequent as the months drag on. 

He knocks on the bakery door. "I'm coming!" Niki calls cheerfully from inside. Her smile drops when she opens the door and sees that it's him. He tries not to take it personally.

"Hey, Niki," he says.

She doesn't respond, staring at him tiredly.

"I'm here to collect your taxes." She sighs quietly, looking around the docks before opening the door to let him in. Schlatt gave him a list of items to collect. He reads through it. "I'll need thirty-two diamonds, three stacks of iron and five stacks of bread."

Niki groans. "That's ridiculous. You can't tax me for items that I _don't have._ Seriously, you _know_ Schlatt is a greedy dictator. Why are you _compliant in his schemes?_ "

Quackity adjusts his beanie. "I have faith in our democratically elected government." Is all he can say. Niki's just voicing doubts that he's been ignoring for weeks.

She glares, looking like she wants to hit him with the poker sitting under the oven she's standing next to. For the first time ever, he fears for his safety, when it's just him and Niki. What has Schlatt done, to destroy all the norms that he got used to? Niki isn't supposed to be _angry_. She's _sweet._

He doesn't see any of that sweetness anymore.

"You know that I'm only being taxed like this because Schlatt doesn't want me voicing criticism of his nation." Despite her simmering anger, Niki opens a chest and hands Quackity the iron and bread.

"You're aligning yourself with terrorists. You're lucky that your punishment is this light." He doesn't really find the confidence in his own words to believe them. "You'll be punished for not paying your dues fully."

"What will you do? Tax me _more?_ "

This is why he hates taking her taxes.

The bakery that he used to think was beautiful and open is now too stuffy. He hastily makes his exit, and is immediately calmed by the ocean breeze on his face. Out on the docks, he sees a strange sight. 

Tubbo is standing far out almost at the end of the dock, surrounded by what can only be described as a _swarm_ of wolves. They don't seem aggressive, just running around him as he empties something out of his backpack and into one of the barrels. Tubbo is too far away for Quackity to make out whatever it is. He's not exactly keen to walk over and lessen the distance between himself and the wolves. Just because they've taken a strange liking to Tubbo doesn't mean they'll like _him._

He can hear Tubbo laughing as the wolves bark and dance around his feet. Some of them are massive, looking like if they stood on their hind legs, they'd be twice as tall as Tubbo.

Not wanting to get mauled by a wolf and lose the collected taxes, Quackity quietly and slowly climbs the stairs up to Niki's farm, but none of the wolves have noticed him, anyway.

"Do you think Tubbo is hiding something from us?" He asks Schlatt.

The president narrows his eyes. "Now that you mention it, I think he might."

Quackity has figured out the pattern with Tubbo's disappearances. After Schlatt shoved a new calendar into his hands, he decided to take note of the nights when he can't find Tubbo. 

His disappearances align with the lunar cycle. Every full moon and new moon, he leaves Manberg and goes into the forest. 

He's not entirely sure what this means, but he has the beginnings of a theory. 

It's not even that outlandish. Schlatt has _horns_ and Techno is _literally_ pig headed.

Manberg's Secretary of State might be a werewolf.

Tubbo scratches at his hair.

Wolves get fleas, right? Just another piece of evidence.

He dedicates all of his spare time over the following days to researching werewolves, or _lycanthropes_ as some of Eret's older books call them. 

The exchange when Quackity showed up at his castle doorstep can only be described as awkward. Eret had been sceptical of his poorly crafted excuse for needing access to his library, and then _Hbomb_ had showed up and started blinking rapidly and opening his eyes widely in what might have an attempt to look cute. That or he was having a stroke. It's hard to tell with Hbomb.

Fully ignoring the antics of the man behind him, Eret had eventually given in and let Quackity come into his library for an hour or so each day.

On one terrible, terrible condition.

He has to be supervised by Hbomb.

At first, it hadn't been too bad. Hbomb led him through the many rooms of the castle to the library, and sat at one of the tables, just watching Quackity as he browses through the mythology section of Eret's collection. He finds a taxonomy book going over the physical structure of were-creatures, tucking it under his arm as he looks for a more comprehensive summary of werewolf lore.

And then Hbomb starts humming.

After a few minutes of being unable to ignore the off-tune noise, he turns around and snaps. "If you're bored, why don't you help me?"

Hbomb doesn't stop, amusedly watching him. "…I'm not bored. I'm happy to spend time with you," he says with a wink.

Quackity doesn't even bother hiding his grimace. He knows that Hbomb is fully capable of acting sanely, he just decides not to.

(He tries not to think about the obvious parallel between Hbomb and himself.)

"What are you looking for anyway?" Hbomb asks in an irritating singsong.

"That's not your business." Hbomb lets out an overdramatic gasp of offense.

Quackity finds an ancient book of various mythologies, not even bothering to flip through it to see if it actually mentions werewolves. He sits at a table as far away from Hbomb as possible.

He opens the book, searching through the index. His finger lands on "werewolves", and he turns to the chapter on the topic.

Regrettably short, it is focused on _how_ werewolves might come into existence, and their behaviour. Lycanthropes, he learns, don't have an obvious origin due to their very elusive nature. They might be born that way, cursed by the gods for violent crimes, or turned by exposure to a hypothetical "venom". Quackity thinks that it is extremely unlikely that Tubbo's done any crime deserving such punishment. If he did, then he clearly doesn't know Tubbo nearly as well as he had thought. 

As he's pondering this, Hbomb walks over and drops a book on the table, sitting across from him. The man opens the book to a random page halfway through. "You know, this is pretty cute, right? Just me and you, on a study date."

Trying his hardest to ignore him, Quackity continues reading. A nonviolent werewolf is incredibly rare, as transformation under the full moon causes a full personality switch that turns even the nicest people into bloodthirsty monsters.

Perhaps that's the reason Tubbo vanishes. He leaves Manberg just before nightfall when the moon is full so that he's far away from people as possible and therefore unlikely to attack anyone. 

He wonders if the members of Pogtopia, somewhere out there in the wilderness, are at risk of being attacked. Should he reach out, or would they not believe him on principle? He is working for their greatest enemy.

"What are you reading?" Hbomb asks, leaning over to try and read upside down. "Werewolves, I didn't know you were _that_ kind of guy." 

Quackity buries his face in his hands as Hbomb giggles.

Since every book he found firmly described werewolfdom as a curse that inherently causes pain and suffering, Quackity devoted a lot of time researching potential clues. As well as ways to defend himself.

To kill a werewolf, they'd have to be dealt a mortal wound with a silver blade (as the purity of the metal apparently destroys their impure, cursed soul) or burn to death. 

The most reliable cure seems to be wolfsbane, but Quackity is shit at identifying flowers. There's also a chance that too much exposure to the flower could kill a someone, which is a risk he's not willing to take with Tubbo.

A stranger cure is to throw the werewolf's clothes at them. He doesn't really believe _that_ one could work, but when he goes out at night he carries one of Tubbo's coats folded under his arm. More as self-defence than anything.

He could also speak Tubbo's first name, but he doesn't fucking know what his real name even is.

Another way to stop a werewolf from transforming is to overwork them. From what he's seen, Schlatt's already got that handled.

Quackity keeps a close eye on Tubbo. He could talk to him about it, but he feels that if it's a secret that Tubbo's been keeping for so long, he won't appreciate being found out.

While looking for caves in savanna far outside of Manberg, he runs into Tommy. The boy looks worn out, incomparable to the proud vice president that was exiled from the country almost half a year ago now. "Tommy." He says.

Tommy looks up, startled. He looks around. "Are you wanting a fight?"

"We're well out of the borders of Manberg and the DreamSMP. I guess this is as neutral of a ground as we can get."

Tommy nods absently. The boy isn't wearing his revolutionary uniform anymore. For some reason, it makes Quackity feel a bit sad.

"Well, is there something you want to talk about, then?"

"I've seen Tubbo sneaking into the forest at night. I know Pogtopia is in that direction." Tommy stiffens. "This isn't a threat or anything!" Quackity says hurriedly, "I just thought, I'd, you know, give you a heads up."

"I don't need your help."

"Tommy, I'm not your enemy. I've noticed Tubbo acting strangely and I-"

"Just drop it." Tommy says, giving him a wide berth as he walks past him. "This is all your fault, you know."

 _Actually, it's George's_ he thinks, but stays silent. He watches as Tommy disappears back into the forest. He hopes Tommy will be careful around Tubbo. He doesn't want Tubbo hurting anyone.

A week later, as fireworks surround him, filling his vision with burning light, Quackity realises he was very, very wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't resist throwing in some angst at the end, you know how it is.  
> Come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://jestayork.tumblr.com/) if you like
> 
> Requests are open  
> \- no ship  
> \- no extreme whump (I write angst like a tv show targeted at 13 year old boys, dark but not brutal)  
> \- be specific! If you have an idea, I'd like you to go into as much detail as you can.


End file.
